Savour Cup's team spirit

Racing's blinkered old reactionaries might have the hump but the Shergar Cup worked. Many of Ascot's crowd were doubtless attracted by the Natalie Imbruglia concert after racing, but most of the 23,434 spectators on Saturday enjoyed the whole buzz of the day and the new light the event shed on jockeyship.

The team competition for jockeys brought out a great response from the riders and being pipped by the Rest of the World (RoW) crew last year clearly bugged Great Britain & Ireland (GBI).

Kieren Fallon's side had a score to settle. They did that by earning first place in all six races to take the trophy 137-110.

The Shergar Cup ' s detractors insist racing is not a team event.

The sport's rules require each horse to be ridden for the best chance of winning. This did not happen on Saturday and that's why GBI won.

In the two-mile event, for example, Fallon set a strong pace on Jasmick, requiring stamina more consistent with a two mile four furlong race - perfect for winner, Mana D'Argent, ridden by teammate Pat Eddery. Add to that Fallon's exquisite wide manoeuvre on the home turn, allowing Eddery to nip through on the rail and simultaneously forcing two RoW riders to take a longer route.

Hughie Morrison, Jasmicks trainer, complained his filly was "used as a pawn". He has reason to be aggrieved. To a rising trainer in charge of less than 50 horses, Jasmick is a precious commodity.

He fears her chance of winning York's Tote Ebor nextweek has been damaged.

It was a clever strategy by GBI but there are other issues. Horses are not machines, there are welfare issues involved. Also, the Shergar Cup should not unexpectedly impact on a horse's whole season.

But if the team aspect is paramount, we should daringly embrace this event.

It would need its own rules and winners would not count towards jockeys' or trainers' title races. But rules governing safety - such as reckless and careless riding - should still apply. Transgressions could result in points being docked, perhaps.

Ascot could aim for a slightly lower standard of horse, malleable enough for good jockeyship, and reward them sufficiently that the Shergar Cup becomes their main target. Riders, as the focus, must be paid well enough. The absence of most top-drawer trainers and horses, as happens now, wouldn't then matter.

Morrison has a constructive-idea. He said: "If horses are ridden as a team, then all five should get an equal share of the prize money achieved by the collective's best placing."

Both Ascot and the Jockey Club baulk at this radical step, but nothing should be ruled out at this crossroads in the Shergar Cup's history.

Isn't the point to distinguish it from other fixtures?

Racing's top commentators have fallen over each other to decry it as a punting medium, seeking to raise their stock with the betting man on the street.

How insulting. They evidently believe punters are too stupid to understand betting on a clearly billed, one-off event.

The Shergar Cup certainly caught the imagination of someone at the BBC.

When was the last time a whole card was televised on terrestrial TV?

Pace zipped at the post

Yavana's Pace did not, as widely reported, become the oldest horse ever to win a Group One race at Germany's Cologne racecourse last Sunday.

In Australia in 1982, New Zealand-bred Magistrate was also 10 when recording the second of back-to-back victories in the Perth Cup. Now a Group Two, from 1980 until 1992 it carried Group One status.

Can either achievement compare with that of John Henry, whose final 1984 season - aged nine - boasted three fiercely contested Group One triumphs in America?

An anomaly of British law allows me to roam freely, anorak zipped flush to my chin.

Holmes displays naked ambition

This Friday, the Essex County Showground at Great Leighs stages its final major equestrian event before the whole site is razed for a £40million racecourse redevelopment.

It's a well-executed gamble by owner John Holmes, who must apply along with at least seven other racecourse projects for fixtures from the British Horseracing Board when invitations open this autumn.

The HOK Design Team responsible for Ascot's redevelopment has conceived the grandstand, which spares our jockeys no blushes with a completely glass-fronted weighing-room. Stripping another layer of mystery from the sport, quite literally.

Sakhee's left on his knees

Godolphin's gamble of last October - pitching Fantastic Light into the Breeders' Cup Turf and Sakhee the Classic, rather than the other way round - may have caused a greater loss than first imagined.

While the Turf was won, the Classic was narrowly lost to dinosaur-headed heartbreaker, Tiznow.

Yet Belmont's dirt, where the Classic was run, is not as hard on problem knees as Nad Al Sheba's in Dubai, where Sakhee ran twice - averagely - before Saturday's defeat in Deauville.

So, is it his joints or his will that's hurting? And can he beat the odds to make like Lazarus for the second time in his career?